Harland Clarke Pays $630 Million Premium for RetailMeNot
No doubt banking on the value consumers will place on integrating online coupons into the purchasing experience, payments provider Harland Clarke has agreed to purchase merchant offers marketplace RetailMeNot Inc., in a deal valued at around $630 million. Harland Clarke will pay $11.60 for each outstanding share of RetailMeNot stock—a more than 50 percent premium over the stock’s closing price on April 7.
The deal already has been unanimously approved by RetailMeNot’s board of directors, but the transaction remains subject to closing conditions and regulatory approval. The deal is expected to close before the end of Q2 2017, according to the companies.
Harland Clarke will integrate RetailMeNot with its Valassis direct mailing subsidiary, which the company acquired for $1.3 billion in 2013. “RetailMeNot provides a new global digital channel to distribute our clients’ offers that perfectly complements Valassis’ current digital, mobile, mail and other print networks,” said Victor Nichols, CEO, Harland Clarke. RetailMeNot already has a presence in each of those channels, through which it distributes its offers and discounts, Nichols noted.
The sale to Harland Clarke marks the second time RetailMeNot has been sold since its founding in 2009. In 2010, the company was acquired by WhaleShark Media, along with several other online deals providers—all of which then were consolidated under the RetailMeNot brand. The company went public in 2013, raising $191 million in its initial public offering on Nasdaq. Meanwhile, other online deals providers have been acquired by payments companies looking to gain access to their large bases of deal-seeking consumers—including Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, which shelled out $1 billion to purchase Ebates in 2014. The previous year, JPMorgan Chase acquired San Francisco-based daily deals startup Bloomspot Inc., in a bid to bolster the local merchant discounts the bank could offer its credit card customers.
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